A few times early in “Supergirl,” its heroine looks like a mess — a beautifully styled and scrupulously photographed one, true, but a wreck nevertheless. She likes to party hard, this chick, and will slam down drinks as heedlessly as any bro on a bender before crawling into bed alone on her artfully groovy, dishabille spaceship. When she finally wakes, she’s trying to swat away her frisky dog, Krypto, and protect her eyes from the morning light with mod, oversized Jackie O-style shades. There’s a reason that she drinks heavily, or so the movie insists, even as it keeps squeezing more comedy than pathos out of her intemperance.
However intentional, the metaphoric resonance of this opener is pretty funny, and feels very much on point. Like Supergirl — who goes by Kara and is played by the winning Milly Alcock — faithful moviegoers have been caught up in a seemingly interminable cycle of indulgent excess and morning-after regret. That’s at least one way to describe what it’s been like to have watched the numbingly similar superhero stories that have flooded cinemas for decades. Because, while some of these entertainments offer indisputably pleasurable highs, all this bingeing has been unhealthy for the mainstream film industry. It’s been a drag and, to judge from this movie, it has put a strain on those making new superhero flicks.
The strain shows in different ways in “Supergirl,” which is derivative if altogether watchable, largely on account of its star. It’s the latest addition to the so-called DC Extended Universe, which includes movies focused on superheroes from DC Comics, including the big guy himself: Superman. Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Superman fell to earth and hit the page in 1938, and his cousin, Supergirl, followed around two decades later. In the years since, she made the rounds on the big screen and off, re-emerging in her current incarnation in James Gunn’s “Superman” (2025). She made an impression, though she was upstaged by Krypto, an irrepressible agent of chaos, which Gunn based on his own rescue.
The new movie, written by Ana Nogueira and directed by Craig Gillespie, announces its tone almost at once with a tight shot of Krypto urinating on a newspaper photo of Superman (David Corenswet). It’s a brief, ostentatiously silly moment that announces that this isn’t another Superman movie even if, of course, it is, because the Man of Steel will always be the headliner. The filmmakers are clearly trying to put a bit of distance between these superheroes by playing it light and irreverent. That they’re sullying DC’s marquee attraction — one that Gunn and company have redefined as a sweetly cornball, old-fashioned hero — is definitely a choice. That they haven’t done Supergirl any real favors in doing so is another.
The problem isn’t that Supergirl has to win the audience over; many viewers will be in the tank for the character out of habit, loyalty or just inclination. The issue is that the filmmakers expend too much effort trying to establish Supergirl as not-Superman. He’s the straight arrow, she’s the naughty one, and so on. That isn’t a dilemma; it’s a recipe out of a screenwriting manual. If she were, say, chatting up her fellow barflies about gender oppression, that would distinguish her from her super-brethren. For the most part, though, Supergirl is just another young, alienated extraterrestrial grappling with some eternal existential hurdles, some seriously far out. She’s naturally appealing, and Alcock makes her all the more so.
Things settle down once the story kicks in. It’s familiar, painless and hinges on a girl, Ruthye (Eve Ridley), who’s out for vengeance. She’s chasing a pack of thugs led by Krem (a lustily showboating Matthias Schoenaerts), whose facial studs suggest that he was trying to bedazzle a motorcycle jacket but missed. He and his crew swooped down on Ruthye’s family on Holzherr, a planet that — to judge from her fast moves and formal speech — is north of Westeros. That’s the home of Arya Stark, the wee avenger from HBO’s “Game of Thrones” series whom Ruthye evokes. It’s a small Warner Bros. world, after all (HBO is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery): Alcock was in HBO’s “House of the Dragon,” a “Thrones” prequel.
By the time a visibly entertained Jason Momoa — another “Game of Thrones” alum — shows up on a tricked-out motorcycle looking like a pumped, wayward member of the band Kiss, it’s hard not to wonder how far the corporate synergy will go. Far, very far, because once all the parts are in place and Supergirl and Ruthye are bonded, they’re fighting shoulder to shoulder in an adventure that owes a conspicuous debt to George Miller’s “Furiosa” films (yet more Warner Bros. releases). That this movie never matches the brilliance of Miller’s goes without saying, despite the heavy-metal clanging. That Alcock manages to rise above the fray with a performance that never feels like borrowed goods is at once a surprise and a gift.
Supergirl Rated PG-13 for mild peril and mass casualties. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. In theaters.
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